A German-Canadian's anguish over the Second World War

Ortrun Kneifel went to school and worked on farm fields in Germany during the rise of the Nazis. Seven decades later, Ortrun struggles to come to terms with it as a Canadian of German descent. She is one of 3.2 million. Ortrun is seated in the middle of this 1942 photo, with dark pigtails, checkered dress and two stripes at left wrist.

Ortrun Kneifel had just turned 12 in the autumn of 1944. She and her sister were living with her aunt in Silesia, the eastern section of what was then war-torn Germany.

“The Russians are marching.” That’s what her uncle told them after returning from Germany’s Eastern front — the remnants of Otrun’s family must leave immediately.

As the sound of Russian bombs pounded on the horizon, Ortrun’s life as a refugee began.

Ortrun would become one of about 12 million Germans fleeing oncoming Russians during that bitterly cold winter, says historian Manuel Meune, of the University of Montreal. Two million would be killed, raped or die of starvation.

Along with her toy dog, Ortrun had been able to hurriedly pack a family photo album, a blanket, a leather bag of apples from their tree and “a little prayer book from my father — because my father was dead.”

Ortrun hadn’t seen her mother for years and her beloved school principal father, Friedrich Schuetze, had been killed during Nazi Germany’s invasion of Russia. Ortrun still puzzles over his mysterious death.

Seven decades later, Ortrun struggles to come to terms with the Second World War as a Canadian of German descent. She is one of 3.2 million.

We don’t often hear their stories — since many in Canada have gone silent and “want people to forget they’re German” after two devastating world wars, says Meune, a specialist in German-Canadian culture.

We rarely hear the story of German-Canadians like Ortrun Kneifel â since many have gone silent and âwant people to forget theyâre Germanâ after two devastating world wars, says cultural historian Manuel Meune.

Now 82, Ortrun has not only had to recover from the war and loss of family, the longtime church organist also has felt profound guilt, especially about Jews.

After moving to Canada in the 1950s along with a wave of postwar German immigrants, Ortrun and her husband raised four children in Metro Vancouver.

Long after the war, she saw a CBC television documentary series on the Holocaust.

For days afterwards, a horrified Ortrun repeated to herself: “I must not go outside. I’m German.” A worried friend finally encouraged her out for a walk.

In the midst of all the pain, however, there has been Ortrun’s yearning for peace and reconciliation between countries and individuals.

So Remembrance Day triggers many feelings — including sorrow and hope.

‘I have nothing to hide’

Ortrun’s memories will be familiar to many of the roughly 400,000 Germans who made their way after the Second World War to Canada, which was still grieving for its casualties.

More than 45,000 Canadian soldiers had died fighting German and Japanese troops. On top of Second World War tensions, Muene says Canadians of German origin — many of whom arrived in the 19th and early 20th centuries — had “never recovered” their public voice because of the suspicion they came under after the First World War.

It’s why Canadians don’t hear much about Germans as an ethno-cultural group, he says, even though there are far more of them than Canadians of, say, Greek, Chinese, Filipino or Latin descent.

“Many just said nothing about the Second World War” as they tried to fit in, Meune said.

In the 1950s, Meune acknowledges, “Sometimes it was legitimate to ask of some German immigrants: ‘What did you really do in the Second World War?’ There were definitely some Nazis.”

Complex feelings about collective guilt also explain why so few German movies have been made about the Second World War, although that’s starting to change, with last year’s production of the much-discussed German TV seriesGeneration War.

Ortrun is one woman of German ancestry who is courageous enough to tell her story, however. “I have nothing to hide,” she says

At six years old, Ortrun recalls seeing smoke coming from the synagogue in her town.

Years later, she realized it had been Nov. 9, 1938 — Kristallnacht — the night of the Nazi’s infamous co-ordinated attacks against Jewish stores and places of worship.

“That’s when it started to become ugly,” Ortrun says. “I had no idea why at the time. I didn’t know they hated the Jews.”

Ortrun was being raised by her grandmother and father, who taught German history and Christianity in the public school. She had not seen her mother since 1935, when she had caused a “scandal” by leaving her father.

The two daughters dearly loved their “very proper” father.

âMy father was very tall,â Ortrun says. For some reason, he decided to stand in his army raft, making himself a target, as it crossed the Bug River, near Warsaw. Was it a form of suicide?

“We always said he was a father and mother in one,” Ortrun says, her accented voice sounding tender in a conversation in her Point Grey apartment, seated across from her piano.

Ortrun’s father would read the daughters stories and take them hiking. They would sing together “all the time.” And he would play violin in church.

Pressure to conform, the Hitler Youth

Before the war began in 1939, however, the pressure to conform to Naziism was strong in Silesia, a large region surrounding the city of Wroclaw in what is now Poland.

As a girl, Ortrun remembers being repeatedly required at her strict school (where she was strapped on the one day she forgot to bring her homework) to celebrate Adolph Hitler’s birthday: April 20th.

Like all young people, Ortrun was mandated by law to do her nationalistic duty and go to Wednesday and Saturday gatherings of the Hitler Youth.

Her grandmother was not pleased, however. And when the leader of the Hitler Youth insisted Ortrun should also attend on optional Sundays, the grandmother said no.

Many German adults lived in terror of being exposed as unpatriotic. Ortrun learned later a family friend had disappeared and Nazi officials had shown up at his wife’s door, delivering nothing but a container of his ashes.

Ortrun’s father was also in a bind. He would not be allowed to teach in the public schools unless he joined the Nazi party. At the same time, some people believed he lacked enthusiasm about Naziism.

Neither side trusted him, said Ortrun. “In German we say, ‘He was sitting between the chairs.’”

Friedrich’s dilemma was common, Meune says. “Some people in Germany were full-fledged Nazis, and others just had to become Nazis to preserve their jobs and support their families.”

Like virtually all young German men, Ortrun’s father joined the army. He left home around the beginning of the war. Ortrun never saw him again.

She heard of her father’s fate when a soldier showed up at their home and described the strange way he had died.

It was on June 22, 1941, the first day of the massive German assault against Russia.

“My father was very tall,” Ortrun says. For some reason, Friedrich decided to stand in his army raft, making himself a target, as it crossed the Bug River, near Warsaw.

“My father stood up: So he was killed. And my sister and I have the feeling that he must have been very, very sad his marriage didn’t work. My sister and I said perhaps he didn’t want to live any more. And later we found out he had known a bit about what the Nazis were doing in the concentration camps.”

With her father dead, Ortrun continued to go to school and, as part of the war effort, work on farm fields, with her older sister toiling in a munitions factory.

In the summer of 1944, which was extremely hot, Ortrun recalls seeing men with shaved heads digging a hole in the square below her window. They were wearing striped clothes, without hats, in the blistering sun.

Worried, Ortrun asked her grandmother if she could take the workers some water. Her grandmother said, “’No, we can’t Ortrun. They’re guarded.’ I heard from her tone she was sad.”

Years later, Ortrun realized the workers were from a concentration camp.

Ortrun, right, recalls seeing men with shaved heads digging a hole in the square below her window. Worried about the heat, Ortrun asked her grandmother if she could take the workers some water. Her grandmother said, ââNo, we canât Ortrun. Theyâre guarded.ââ

On the run

As the war turned against Germany and Ortrun’s uncle told them they had to flee, Ortrun, her sister and aunt were lucky to get on one of the crammed trains leaving Silesia. “Others had to walk.”

Over the next weeks, Ortrun got off and on many trains, some of them open boxcars, heading like others for the region northwest of Berlin. But no German family seemed ready to take them in.

“There was no space for us. They resented us refugees. We didn’t have money. We were hungry and cold.”

So they went back on the trains again and finally found a place to stay near the town of Helmstedt, where her sister helped take care of a family’s child.

After Germany surrendered in early May, 1945, Ortrun said American soldiers arrived in tanks “that made horrible noise.” They went door to door with raised rifles looking for Nazis. “We were so scared.”Life became more even more “chaotic” after the war and there was even less food.

An armed border was suddenly installed separating West and East Germany. Ortrun could walk to it, but had to make sure she didn’t get shot for going too close. (The 25th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall was marked Nov. 9, 2014).

She fell gravely sick. Even after she recovered her aunt did not allow her to go to music school. But she was wooed by a German schoolmate. And in time she would join him in Canada.

Adapting to Canada, with lederhosen

In 1956, Ortrun began her life in East Vancouver, living around 46th Avenue and Fraser Street. “We had nothing.” Her husband worked at first in a tanning mill.

Relying on clothing donations from Germany, their two sons sometimes wore lederhosen (leather pants) and two daughters wore dirndls (traditional dresses). The family drove a Volkswagen.

“I soon found out my sons got laughed at. And we were called Krauts.”

Struggling to learn English and “not having a clue” about Canada, Ortrun somehow made her way to Vancouver’s Bach Choir.

She was able to sing in German and meet Anglo-Canadians who appreciated her. It saved her soul. It brought joy.

Her husband, after odd jobs, became a realtor. And Ortrun became for 25 years the music director at the Lutheran Church of the Cross, a largely German congregation in Oakridge.

But even though Ortrun finally fulfilled her dream to study music at the University of B.C., there were many difficulties, including her divorce.

And she was shaken to the core in the 1990s when she visited the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, where many Jews had been exterminated, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, the mentally ill, socialists and others.

“The Germans were so methodical (running the death camps). It was horrible to see that.”

She began to study history to try to make sense of the war, its roots in the Treaty of Versailles and the extent of Germans’ shame.

A UBC history professor friend came by one day and noticed she had a book on the coffee table on Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Ortrun told the professor she was reading because “’I need to know more about what happened; there is so much we didn’t know.’”

The professor remarked, “’Every German says that.’ ”

Years later Ortrun found it in herself to tell him, “You really hurt me.”

Ortrun recalls the dead on all sides, including her dear father. She’s fine with the red poppy but prefers the white poppy.

The professor never apologized but later gave her flowers, saying, “I know you were just a child during the Nazi time.”

A redemptive moment came with one of her piano-playing companions. They were playing a duet one day when it became clear her friend from South Africa knew a German word. How could that be? The musical friend revealed she knew some Yiddish — and was Jewish.

“I hugged her and said, ‘Thank you for playing with me;’ and she answered she understood collective guilt because she was from South Africa during the apartheid era.”

Even though Ortrun would often apologize for being German when she met Jewish people, another Jewish friend finally told her, “You’ve got to stop saying that.”

On Remembrance Day, Ortrun has trouble with Canadians who seem to wear red poppies to remember only those who suffered on the Allied side. She understands why they do, but it still makes her feel “like an enemy.”

She recalls the dead on all sides, including her dear father. It’s why she prefers to wear the white poppy. She believes it’s a stronger antiwar symbol, in memory of all who suffer in conflict.

Ortrunâs beloved father would read the daughters stories and take them hiking. They would sing together âall the time.â And he would play violin in church.

Ortrun today in Vancouver. She integrated into Canada in part with the help of music and Vancouverâs Bach Choir. She was able to sing in German and meet Anglo-Canadians who appreciated her. It brought joy.